ACRE Research Papers

“Improve Transparency in Arkansas: Every Arkansas County Needs Fiscal Data Available On-Line” by J.T. Schrock and Dr. David Mitchell

The authors surveyed each Arkansas county’s web presence, and did not find a consistent structure or consistent content for the websites. Many Arkansas counties have no significant web presence. One-third of the counties had no website for the county government in any form. Only a handful of the remaining counties had made any fiscal and budgetary information available on their website. Schrock and Mitchell estimate that no more than 11 percent of the voting public are likely to see the Annual Financial Report under Arkansas’s current requirement. ACRE’s solution for this problem would be to increase the county-government web presence for every county in Arkansas, and especially to include government financial data, made available to the public anytime, on demand. This information should be presented in a quality and structure that can be easily understood by anyone with a reasonable background in reading financial or business data. Finally, the information should be complete and be inclusive of all areas of government responsible to the county judge.

Radio

ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu and Program Coordinator Terra Aquia were on Conduit News Radio on September 26, 2018, discussing their recently released transparency index.

Op-Eds and Commentary

“A Step at a Time”: op-ed by ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu, published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on December 27, 2019. In the article, Kalulu discusses the benefits of Act 546.

“In Public View”: op-ed by ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on September 20, 2019 discussing the benefits of county government transparency in the context of the Pope County casino construction deliberations.

“Stop Corruption”: op-ed by ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu, published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on August 5th, 2019. Kalulu discussed solutions to this question and four steps officials can take to improve transparency in the state.

“Open the Books: Can’t Catch It If You Can’t See It”: op-ed by ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu, published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on January 28, 2019. Kalulu discusses the benefits of transparency to county governments, particularly how beneficial the improved management of tax dollars can be. He points out that a great way to get this benefit is to publish county budgets online.

“Open the Books! Let Public See County Fiscal Data”: op-ed by ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Mavuto Kalulu, published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on November 19, 2018. Kalulu explains the results of ACRE’s recently released transparency index and the reasons why county officials should care about improving their fiscal transparency.

“Another Arkansas County Embraces Online Transparency”: This is a post on the ACRE Review by Caleb Taylor posted on September 3, 2019 that discusses transparency advancements made by Faulkner County in August 2019. Primarily, Taylor writes about ACRE Policy Analyst Mavuto Kalulu’s appearance at a Faulkner County Quorum Court meeting, where Kalulu discussed the results of ACRE’s Access Arkansas publication.

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Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Central Arkansas nor are they endorsed by the University of Central Arkansas.

ACRE does not campaign for, promote, advocate, or support specific political parties or political candidates.